Knowing that there was only two days left until Grandes Montets closed for the season, I
wanted to make use of the lift and ski something from the GM.
Billy Bhoy and me at the top |
Cutting a way through the cornice |
Going back for either the West face of the Chardonnet or the
NE Slope of the Courtes were two of the ideas I was thinking about. After
speaking to a friend who'd just skied the Barbey couloir on the Aiguille du
Argentire and said it was really good, I started to take a fancy to this.
Bouche was keen for a big day out on the hill as so we
headed up on first bin to give ourselves as much time. When we arrived at the
basin we met three other skiers going for the Barbey as well. They were pretty
strong skiers and broke trail most of the way up. A would like to say that I
was being tactiful in staying back a bit a not catching them so they'd be
breaking trail, but honastly I felt quite tired was happy to sit back a bit and
not be up there first. As it was happened though I caught them up just when we
had to start boot packing, and I did my fair share of trail breaking then.
Deep snow at the start |
Bouche riding some features |
We reached the top at about
1 o'clock. The conditions looked really good at the top. Further down it
did look like there was a lot of runnels from all the snow pouring down. The
Americans went on left side of the face and we entered on the right. We both
had to chop away at the cornice to allow us onto the face.
The snow at the top of the couloir was so deep. It made the
angle seem a lot less than 47°. It was possible to take some
variations on the way down but I think the better snow was in the main part of
the couloir. There was a few sharks (rocks) about which sometimes gave your
skis a wee nibble. Most of the turns
were really good, and snow stayed really soft most of the way down. After about
2/3 of the way down it got a bit heavier and rutted from the runnels. Bouche
managed to hit one of these runnels square on which knocked him over and he
ended up losing a pole!
We skinned around the base of the Aiguille du Argentire then
boot packed up the north side to the Col du Chardonnet and skied back down to
the basin. Bouche found this all really
interesting skinning up and skiing down with one pole.
We were planning to stay at the Argentire hut where Graham
was going to Join us, and we would all go ski something the next day with an
early start. Unfortunately the hut was fully booked so we decided to head back
down to Chamonix.
Bouche slashing the pow |
It's just irresponsible to go on the hill without crevasse rescue gear! |
Not a lot of snow left now! |
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